Carla,
I think you make some good points, I agree that students can easily be cyberbullies and that schools need to do something to monitor this. I like how you provided three separate pieces of evidence to support your claim, they all did a good job of showing real life issues that could be solved through stricter regulations on what we share…[Read more]

While reading 1984 I saw many problems that are happening in our world today. The most startling one for me, however, was the idea of forgetting history. Repeatedly throughout the novel George Orwell showed us

Johnna,
I really enjoyed reading your article. I have thought the same things many times and agree with what you said about native born Americans taking for granted the privileges we have. I also agree that to many immigrants America is an escape from a dangerous life, however we are not the most welcoming and do not make it easy for immigrants.…[Read more]

Crismeylin, I really liked the thoughts you shared in this post, I think that it is a difficult question of whether we should all be the same or not. I agree with what you said that everyone is different because we all have our own individual minds. We do not all think the same and therefore do not all act the same. However, while it would be…[Read more]

Nicolette, I chose your post because I think this topic is a very important issue that many times people are too afraid to talk about. I think it is very brave that you shared you story, I am confident your post will help others who are struggling with self worth as well to see they are not alone. I really liked how you said, “I was the only one…[Read more]

Adelphe, I decided to read this article because I wrote a similar one on gun violence. I agree that our government needs to step up and make a change. Do you think that the government should crack down on mental health and preventing mentally unstable people from getting guns or do you think that the government should just ban certain guns all…[Read more]

Kassandra, I liked how you used two different view points and compared and contrasted them. I agree with you that lowering the drinking age will help kids learn how to drink responsibly. This makes me think of countries in Europe where the drinking age is lower and kids generally do not abuse it.

I am interested in gun rights, specifically in the US compared to the rest of the world and what this means for gun violence in the US. I read three articles on run rights, one was mostly about the statistics of

I thought where you said “the US has roughly half of the worlds civilian owned guns, and in addition to this we have one of the highest gun related homicide rates in the world among developed nations.” was a really interesting statistic because I think guns are so normalized in our society but it opens it up to a new perspective when you look at it in comparison to other countries. I am curious about some of the ways that other countries have dealt with the gun control issue. Here is a link to an article by Time magazine which proposes some ways we can reduce gun violence that I think are relevant to your argument(http://time.com/5209901/gun-violence-america-reduction). Thank you for sharing this article I look forward to reading what you have to say about this topic in the future.

Although it should be surprising that the US has half of the worlds owned guns, and one of the highest gun related homicide rates in the world, it is not that surprising considering all the events that have happened recently. I also like that you mentioned that other nations have responded to gun violence by reforming gun laws, because this should influence the US to do the same. I wonder however, if anything similar to the mass shootings in the US, has happened in these other places and that’s why they changed their gun laws. Also, it’s good to hear the perspective from people who have been in schools shootings. Here is a link of someone’s story, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/opinion/letters/activism-emma-gonzalez.html
I have read many similar articles to you and I have learned similar facts about gun control in the US. I would like what you think of the article from the people involved in school shootings.

So, first off, whoever thinks the second amendment is for “hunting, self-defense, sport, or just because I want to” does not understand what the amendment was made for. It was made to combat a tyrannical government. In a tyrannical nation, the gov’t owns all the guns, that amendment was made so that doesn’t happen. Secondly, gun control is not “sorely needed”, in fact it really isn’t needed at all. If you look at Australia, they had a mandatory buy-back of all firearms in the country, and yes the gun violence went down. However, violent crime went straight up since there were no firearms. But that’s a different country. Let’s look at Chicago. Chicago has the most strict gun laws in the entirety of the US, and yet their gun homicides are very high. High 2000s-3000s. If you look at overall gun deaths in the US per-year, you’ll get a number that is around 33,000. However, this number is misleading because it includes gang violence and suicide. So, if you take those out, you’ll get a number closer to 8-9000 per-year. Which, yes, is still not ideal, but nothing is ideal with the power of free will that we all attain. If you look at FBI Crime Statistics, you are more likely to be stabbed to death than being killed by any kind of gun that isn’t a handgun. You’re more likely to beaten to death by a blunt object, punched to death, yet we don’t lobby to ban hands and chairs, do we? What about cars? Car accidents are pretty high, why don’t we ban cars? We already tried banning alcohol, that didn’t work out so well. Trying to get rid of firearms will only create more of a problem. All it will do is disarm law-abiding citizens. It makes it so they cannot defend themselves. The second amendment exists for a reason, and “shall not be infringed” was written down for a reason.

Lexi,
I’m glad you are talking about such a hot button issue in America’s current political environment. A lot of what I’ve come to see with this issue is that while many push for legislation to push for gun control, the true problem lies in the system itself. You talked about, “how unwilling the US is to have any kind of gun reform.” I don’t think the US is unwilling to gun reform, but organizations such as the NRA push their views on gun rights, and are able to control the political environment because of how much money they put into backing politicians. The NRA has spent over four million dollars in lobbying efforts in the current fiscal year. To me, when policy and elections become a game of money and backing rather than the voice of the people, there begins to be a problem. It’s hard for the people’s voice to be heard when politicians owe much of their success to these organizations that push the politician’s hand in a certain direction by treating to not fund their next campaign of they vote in a certain way. It would be interesting if you discussed not only the U.S.’s current state on guns, but how the political environment differs from those countries with stricter gun laws.https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000000082&year=2017 (The NRA’s lobbying spending by year)

This is such a poignant article. Today’s society is basically accepts gun violence in schools as a sad but normal occurrence. I like the quote from the mom who said rather than coming up legislation, we are teaching our kids how to defend themselves. This is an article (https://www.preventioninstitute.org/focus-areas/preventing-violence-and-reducing-injury/preventing-violence-advocacy) that I think you could use to learn more. This also reminds me of a YouTube video I saw that talked about how school gun violence is only a problem in the United States. If you could tell what specific steps are needed to stop this crisis, I will definitely come back and read more.

Our planet is becoming more and more polluted by the day, as we continue to ignore this problem and use products that are harmful for the environment we adding to the destruction of our planet. In order to protect

Alexis I agree that we need to stop ignoring the problem, and start protecting our environment. I think the gas reduction idea would be great to try and make useful because polluting the air with gases is one of the bigger problems for the atmosphere. Electric cars would be great I think it would be a long process to get these around and then you’d need charging stations and stuff for people who are driving far. Also electric cars are really expensive and they would have to bring those prices down if people wanted to drive those which might be difficult, but I think if possible for everyone electric cars would be great.

About us

This is a youth-powered social network that was started in 2003 by a group of teachers from local sites of the National Writing Project.

We merged several earlier blogging projects. We have found that there are many advantages to bringing students together in one site that lives beyond any particular class. It's easier for individual students to read and write about their own passions, to connect with other students, comment on each other's work, and create multimedia posts for each other. Further, it's been exciting for us to pool our knowledge about curriculum, connected learning, and digital literacies.

If being part of such a community makes sense to you, we invite you to join us. We welcome all youth and any teacher interested in having students publish online and participate in the give and take of a social network like Youth Voices.